Session B (10:00-11:30 Thursday)

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Robinson Jeffers: Inveterate Prophet of Change and Ecological Wholeness

Chair: Robert Brophy, California State University, Long Beach

Dirk Aardsma, University of Colorado, Boulder: “Toward a ‘Poetics of Place’”

John Cusatis, University of South Carolina, Columbia: “Destined for the West: the Jungian Aspect in Cather and Jeffers”

Pierre Lagayette, University of Paris IV, Sorbonne: “Jeffers’s California as a Paradigm of U.S. Hegemonic Worldview”

Robert Brophy, California State University, Long Beach: “Jeffers’s West as a Metaphor for the 21st Century”

 

 

The Place of Aesthetics in Western Studies

Chair: Scott Derrick, Rice University

Nat Lewis, St. Michael’s College: “Remedial Aesthetics”

Stephen Tatum, University of Utah: “Orphaned Beauty”

William R. Handley, University of Southern California: “Pleasing Form”

Bonney MacDonald, Union College: “Beauty in Motion at Bonneville: I Could’ve Had a V-8”

 

 

Cruising the Barrios and Reservations: Story Stealers, Wannabes, Tourists

Chair: José F. Aranda, Jr., Rice University

Marcial González, University of California, Berkeley: “Authenticity and the Form of the Novel: Danny Santiago’s Famous All Over Town

Rachel Rich, Utah State University: “Reckoning With Difference: Cultural Tourism in Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima

Mckenzi Mckenzie, University of Arizona, Tucson: “White Kid(s) Read(s) the Indian(s): A Rhetorical Analysis of ‘Paths of Life,’ A Self-Reflexive Ethnographic Exhibit of Ten Native American Tribes of the Southwest”

Linda Lizut Helstern, University of Texas-Pan American: “Steal This Book! Dimensions of Textuality in the Novels of Louis Owens”

 

 

Art, Activism, Pedagogy: Decolonizing Western Master Tropes

Chair: Vincent Perez, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Tace Hedrick, University of Florida: "(South)Western Origins, Changing Futures: Borderlands/La frontera and Chicana/o Historiography."

Jeff Berglund, Northern Arizona University: “Rememories of Hwééldi: Diné Writing”

Ryan Hediger, University of Oregon: “Terry Tempest Williams’ Physical Language”

Jennifer Lynn Stoever, University of Southern California: “‘Re-Storying’ Los Angeles: Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange and the Artistry of Community”

 

 

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Variations on the “Regeneration through Violence” Thesis

Chair: Gioia Woods, Northern Arizona University

Gioia Woods, Northern Arizona University: “How the Myth was Spun: Cowboys, Indians, and Iraq”

Nell Sullivan, University of Houston, Downtown: “Sovereignty, Psychosis, and Bare Life in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian

David Mogen, Colorado State University: “Louis Owens and The Indian’s Escape from Gothic”

Rod Romesburg, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University: “Regeneration through Vampirism: Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s New Frontier”

 

 

Paths Less Taken in Western Criticism: Comparativism, Gothicism, Technology Studies, Comics

Chair: Mark Busby, Texas State University, San Marcos

Tom Hillard, University of Arizona: “The Frontier World of Edgar Huntly: Towards a Theory of a Nature Gothic”

John Donahue, Champlain Regional University: “Jay Gatsby and Pedro Paramo, Dreamers, Lovers, Fools”

Kris Peleg, “Contemplating Digital Evidence: Challenges for Biography”

Jason Gallagher, University of Illinois: “Krazy Kat: Comics in the Desert Southwest of the 1920s & 1930s”

 

 

Genre as Political Strategy: Narrativizing Chicano/a “Reality”

Chair: Amelia de la Luz Montes, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Ben Olguin, University of Texas, San Antonio: “Jimmy Santiago Baca and the Chicano Picaresque”

Frederick Aldama, University of Colorado, Boulder: “Re-theorizing the ‘Real’ in the Short Stories of Dagoberto Gilb and Luis Rodriguez”

Rebecca Moreno, UC Berkeley: “The Body Remains: Sacrifice and Memory in Alejandro Morales’ The Brick People and Arturo Islas’ The Rain God

Elizabeth Fenton, Rice University: “Forgetting the Priest and the Devil: Confession and the Construction of Sexual Truth in Sor Juana’s Second Dream

 

 

Creative Reading – On New Landscapes: Love-Hate Meditations

Chair: Michael L. Johnson, University of Kansas

Michael L. Johnson, University of Kansas: “Don’t Mess With Texas: Love-Hate Poems on the Lone-Star State”

John Bennion, Brigham Young University: “Selections from Falling Toward Heaven

Jody Keisner, University of Nebraska, Omaha: “Train Gang” (excerpt from a work in progress)

 

 

Colonialism, “Tradition,” Female Resistance

Chair: TBA

Angie Kritenbrink, University of Nebraska, Omaha: “Latina Authors, Feminine Traditions and the Feminist Canon”

Alexandra Ramirez, University of Nebraska, Omaha: “Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage: A Redefinition of Independence and Femininity”

Michael C. Carroll, University of Nebraska, Omaha: “Laura Tohe as Storyteller of a Dine Aesthetic”